Covering over seven hundred years of history, this book, now in its fourth edition, takes the reader around the world from the history of the opium trade to pirates, to the building of corporations and migration to the New World. It includes ten new essays, on topics ranging from the early modern ivory and slave trades across the Indian Ocean, to the ways in which the availability of new consumer goods helped changed work habits in both Europe and East Asia, and from the history of chewing gum to that of rare earth metals.